


Once More, With Feeling

by HoopyFrood



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Bisexual Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr., Bisexual Rafael Barba, Bonding, Broadway, Childhood Memories, First Kiss, Flirting, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Musicals, Resolved Romantic Tension, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 07:42:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13519641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoopyFrood/pseuds/HoopyFrood
Summary: Sonny wouldn’t call himself a theatre aficionado by any stretch of the imagination. He enjoys musicals in the same way he does baseball or cheesy B movies. But somewhere along the line theatre became his sanctuary in a way his other interests never did. A safe place. Something just for him that was untouched by distraught young women thinking they’d done wrong and angry young men thinking they hadn’t.





	Once More, With Feeling

It started with a girl.

Or, to be more precise, it started with trying to _impress_ a girl.

And isn’t that a damn teenage cliché.

Her name was Meghan Haslam and she had deep red hair that when loose from its usual French plait would cascade over her shoulders in waves. She wasn’t popular in the head cheerleader or prom queen sense, with looks and reputation deciding where she fell on the High School hierarchy, but she had the truly enviable ability of being able to get along with just about anyone. From those already aiming for an Ivy League to the odd few biding their time before finally dropping out, there was a friendly wave and smile for just about every stereotypical teenage social group.

Fifteen year old Sonny, who by then had already weathered the storm of bullying and thought that having the capacity to just simply _co-exist_ with your peers was practically a superpower, was besotted.

The problem was that they had absolutely nothing in common.

But thanks to her ever increasing involvement in the big end of year drama club performances, Sonny knew for a _fact_ that she was into musical theatre. So he did what made total, _ridiculous_ sense to him at the time; he swotted up.

He rented out _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ , _Grease_ , and _Little Shop of Horrors_ from Blockbuster, religiously playing them over and over on his little TV/VCR combo. He stealthily squirreled away discarded newspapers into his rucksack on his way home from school, flipping straight to the arts sections once alone in his room and memorising as many names as he possibly could. And finally, he got his nonna to teach him a few pieces on the piano so that on the off chance he found himself in one of the music rooms alone with Meghan (which, granted, was a long shot) he could knock out a song or two.

It was all ridiculously elaborate and a few times Sonny wondered if he was perhaps being a touch too deceitful. What would his priest say? Is this the sort of thing he should go to confession for? Lying is a sin, after all. But then he would remember the time Teresa pretended to be interested in hockey to impress her boyfriend and how she went as far as buying a jersey for a team she’d never heard of with the name of a player she couldn’t even pronounce scrawled across the back.

Did it get him the girl? Of course it didn’t. There still has to be some sort of mutual attraction there, a _pull_ , and Meghan could barely remember his name most days. But his interest was piqued and between a soon to be established tradition of getting Bella Broadway tickets for her birthday every year, dating an ensemble performer in his early 20s, and a friend at the police academy who would sing show tunes at the top of his lungs to keep everyone awake after a long day of physical training, theatre became part of his life. 

And if seeing gorgeous men and beautiful women singing unabashedly, _passionately_ , about love and acceptance helped him come to terms with the fact that he enjoyed a stubbled jaw between his thighs just as much as soft breasts under his lips, then that’s between him and God.

Sonny tries to see a show as often as his unpredictable schedule allows, often waltzing straight up to the box office on the day of a performance and grabbing whatever cheap seat is left. That usually means having to put up with a restricted view or being so far up in the nosebleed seats that vertigo becomes a legitimate concern. But every few months he books off a few hours from work and splurges on a premium ticket. Tonight is one of those nights, with his ticket to the _Phantom of the Opera_ being directly beneath the iconic chandelier in the orchestra section.

It’s always a risk shelling out so much money for something you may get unceremoniously yanked away from at any minute. Crime doesn’t wait until you’ve finished your monthly family dinner or first date with the cute barista you’ve been dancing around before it comes knocking, but so far he hasn’t heard a peep from his phone bar a few bored texts from Rollins and, fingers crossed, that’s how the night will stay.

In fact, Sonny’s busy triple checking that it’s set to silent when he catches a familiar face among the throngs of people. 

Dressed characteristically immaculate, though perhaps slightly more casual than usual in a brown herringbone suit with a navy and white gingham shirt, Barba looks just as comfortable among the gold leaf and ornate wall fixtures as he does in court.

It’s no secret that Barba’s tastes tend to run towards the more extravagant. Fancy restaurants, bespoke suits, and expensive whiskey are just a handful of his vices, so overhearing him excuse himself to catch an evening showing of whatever the hottest new ticket in town happens to be rarely has Sonny batting an eyelid. But while he always knew bumping into him was a statistical possibility, he never truly entertained the idea. The thought too fanciful, too much like the chance meetings and dramatic love stories portrayed in his favourite stage shows.

Sonny puts his back to the pillar he’d been casually propped against and drinks in the sight of their ADA with a small smile. He, too, is preoccupied with his phone, furiously tapping out a message with a furrowed brow. Hopefully it’s nothing too important, he thinks, and just Barba being, well, _Barba_. 

With their most recent case having successfully wrapped up a few days ago, Sonny has gone from seeing Barba practically every day for three solid weeks to barely even hearing his name in passing. It’s not a particularly unusual aspect of their working relationship, but it always leaves him feeling unbalanced, like a rug has been pulled out from beneath his feet leaving him teetering on his heels and arms wind milling dramatically. The time spent bringing Barba updated notes and the bickering over legalise that tends to follow becomes something akin to a half-remembered dream fading at the edges once a verdict is delivered. Seeing him again always nudges Sonny’s world back onto its axis.

Running his hands down the front of his suit, Sonny takes a deep steadying breath. Then, with a small nod of encouragement to himself, he starts to head towards Barba. Before he can take more than two steps, a group of German tourists drift in front of him, unintentionally pushing him back into his original spot. Desperate to keep Barba within sight, he finds himself bobbing up and down on his toes to try and see over their heads. When they finally move, ushered along by a harried member of staff, Barba’s gone.

Sonny lets his shoulders slump with a small puff of laughter. Well, so much for his little slice of melodrama.

* * *

Row H, seat 23. Row H, seat 23. Row _H_ , seat _23_.

Sonny mentally repeats it over and over like a mantra as he wanders up the middle aisle. Most people are already in their seats after wisely choosing to escape the crush of bodies in the foyer, so he ends up shuffling along his row muttering embarrassed _thank yous_ and _sorrys_ to the people who have to awkwardly bring in their legs to let him by.

It isn’t until he’s about halfway down the row that he notices Barba again, this time sitting in what must be the seat next to his if he’s counted them correctly. Sonny looks up towards the chandelier hanging proudly above them and murmurs one extra little _thank you_ before powering on with renewed purpose.

Barba glances over on pure instinct the moment Sonny takes his seat, his gaze already swinging away in disinterest before it hits him just who has sat down next to him and he does a cartoonish double take. Sonny bites down hard on his bottom lip to smother the loud guffaw threatening to break free and tries to relax as Barba proceeds to give him a very thorough, very _blatant_ once over through narrowed eyes.

He starts by fixing his gaze somewhere above Sonny’s eyebrows and Sonny, ever the detective, finds himself attempting to follow along with Barba’s thought process. His hair is always something he tends to mess around with when he’s undercover, either forgoing product entirely so it flops down softly into his eyes or adding way more than necessary for that quintessential sleazeball look. Despite a few stray strands having wriggled loose over the course of the day, it’s still pushed back into his usual style.

Once satisfied with whatever he’s seen hair-wise, Barba then begins to slowly drag his eyes down the length of Sonny’s torso. Though Sonny dresses nicer than he used to, the suit he’s wearing is one he _knows_ Barba has seen him in multiple times; a skinny fit blue three-piece with a few shiny patches on the elbows where the fabric has begun to rub away. It’s stylish, but not overly so. Perfect for both slumming it around the precinct _and_ hitting the streets of New York.

When Barba reaches his hips, Sonny shifts awkwardly in his seat. His badge isn’t clipped to his belt, but the slight indent in the leather and unsightly bulge in his left pocket suggests it hasn’t gone far. In fact, he’d only remembered to remove it after having to reassure the worried door attendant that he wasn’t here on police business.

All in all, for anyone that knows him, knows his _job_ , it’s obvious he’s come straight from work.

“Detective,” Barba greets cautiously.

“I’m not undercover,” Sonny offers.

Barba rolls his eyes in that way he often does when someone says something unnecessary, but Sonny _sees_ the tension melt away. His spine loses its uncomfortable rigidity and the tight clasp he has on his playbill eases.

“Well thank Christ for that because this,” Barba begins, pausing to wave his hand up and down the length of Sonny’s slouched form, “is not one of your bests.”

Sonny beams. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s gotten better at reading Barba and identifying his, admittedly, very few tells, or Sonny being here really has genuinely caught him off guard, but either way, it’s sort of nice to have the upper hand for a change. After all, it doesn’t happen very often. Not that he’d admit that out loud.

“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed to throw even you off for a hot second,” he quips teasingly.

Barba hums in response, not denying his assessment, and Sonny inwardly preens. Bullseye.

“So, what, you’re here on a date, then?” Barba asks, already straightening his tie in preparation for an impromptu introduction. “Well look at you splashing your cash. There’s hope for you yet.”

Letting his smile morph into a crooked grin, Sonny rests his arm across the back of Barba’s seat and leans in closer. He catches a whiff of Barba’s cologne; something different to what he usually wears, _spicier_. 

“Date?” Sonny questions through a laugh. “So a Staten Island boy can’t just like a bit of musical theatre? Why, Counselor, I would have thought that given your profession you’d know not to judge a book by its cover.”

“If said book has never done anything to make me think otherwise then I think I’m granted some leeway,” he counters automatically, almost mumbling it in his distraction, attention still directed over Sonny’s shoulders as if expecting the date he so clearly assumes Sonny is here with to pop out from behind him at any second.

Sonny shifts into Barba’s line of sight, successfully blocking his view but earning himself an annoyed frown for his troubles.

“You never asked so I didn’t tell.” 

Sonny means for it to come across as a joke, a silly little play on words, but there’s too much truth wrapped up in it, meaning it lands somewhere between embarrassingly sincere and needlessly accusatory instead. He cringes, ready to laugh it off, but Barba’s frown smooths out into open confusion and Sonny’s left blindsided by just how damn disarming of a look it is on him.

Confusion isn’t a look Sonny typically associates with Barba for obvious reasons, but he finds that he likes the endearing scrunch of his nose it causes just as much as the crinkles that form at the corners of his eyes when he finds something funny. Of course, that may be because he just likes _Barba_ but, hey, semantics.

“You’re here alone?”

“Yep,” Sonny replies with a shrug that he hopes comes across as natural. “You?”

“Sometimes I come by myself,” Barba admits slowly before leaning back to show the empty seat next to him, trapping a couple of Sonny’s dangling fingers between the seat and his back in the process. “Tonight, however, it seems as if I was stood up.”

Sonny winces and awkwardly withdraws his arm once Barba settles back into his original position, the warmth that had begun to seep through Barba’s suit jacket clinging to his fingertips.

“Ouch. Sorry.”

Barba waves away his concern. “It’s fine. I didn’t particularly like him anyway. I was just humouring Rita.”

And for what it’s worth, Barba doesn’t _look_ too torn up about it; he’s turned towards Sonny, posture relaxed, with that familiar teasing glint in his eye. Still, being stood up isn’t a _nice_ feeling whether you’re into them or not. One time after a bad break-up, Sonny was left sitting at a bar for two hours before he got a text through saying the friend of a friend he’d been set up with and that was supposedly _perfect_ for him couldn’t make it. Even now he sometimes finds himself wondering if they’d walked in, saw Sonny, and left. That shit sticks with you.

“Yeah, well, his loss,” Sonny assures him firmly with a companionable squeeze to his knee.

Barba scoffs and pushes into his touch, making his legs fall further apart than they already were and the fabric of his pants pull taut across his thighs “ _Obviously_ ,” he drawls.

Sonny swallows thickly, the collar of his shirt suddenly feeling too tight around his throat, and gives a stilted nod before letting his hand fall back into his lap. “Kind of shitty a ticket had to go to waste, though.”

“I’m not out of pocket. We often get free tickets delivered to the DA’s office as goodwill gestures. I was going to come either way.”

And okay, that’s not necessarily what Sonny was getting at, but _damn_ , that’s a pretty sweet deal.

“ _Free_? Man, this was one of my quarterly splurge tickets,” he complains, a childish whine tinging his tone. “Maybe I should become a lawyer sooner if that’s a perk.”

“Yes, that’s definitely the reason to become a lawyer. Complimentary tickets,” Barba deadpans, face almost entirely expressionless bar a slight twitch to his lips.

“Well it certainly isn’t the company,” Sonny throws back.

Barba only manages an inelegant snort before the lights dim and music starts, cutting off his chance for a rebuttal. Sonny shoots him a wide grin, excitement stretching it across his face, and is pleasantly surprised when Barba matches it with one of his own.

* * *

Sonny’s so caught up in the show that when a hand falls down heavily on his shoulder after the curtain drops for intermission, he jumps in surprise. 

He blinks owlishly up at where Barba’s already standing with his suit jacket draped over one arm and tie loosened from its elaborate knot, unable to comprehend anything beyond the disappointment of having missed the opportunity to see Barba’s fingers deftly wriggle between the silk.

“Let me get you a drink,” Barba offers, the glow of the auditorium backlighting him and turning the tips of his hair a honeyed brown. 

“Oh, no, that’s okay, I—”

“You’re going to brush off a guy who has already been stood up once tonight?” Barba interrupts. “Really, Carisi? Talk about kicking a man while he’s down.” 

Sonny rolls his eyes at Barba’s theatrics but pulls himself to his feet nonetheless. He reaches up high above him in a stretch until he feels that familiar popping sensation in his shoulders before slumping back down with a blissful sigh. “Lead the way, then.”

Barba expertly navigates them through the crush of their fellow theatre goers as Sonny obediently follows behind, barely restraining from reaching out to latch onto Barba’s sleeve so he doesn’t lose him in the crowd.

“Consider me convinced,” Barba says casually over his shoulder once they push through a particularly dense group of people surrounding the merchandise booth. Sonny looks at him questioningly. “You were mouthing along to _Music of the Night_ ,” he goes on to explain, a smirk tugging at his lips.

Sonny groans and playfully shoves him in the shoulder. “Yeah, yeah.”

He lets Barba order for him when they finally reach the bar and takes the natural lull in conversation while he’s occupied to sweep his gaze over the other patrons to make sure there aren’t any grabby hands stealthily sneaking into shouldered bags. You can take the detective out of the precinct, yada yada. Fortunately nothing particularly suspicious catches his eye, the room instead full of giggly teenagers taking selfies and happy couples lost in their own little world.

When two crisp ciders are placed gently down in front of them Sonny’s pleasantly surprised and thanks the barman with a nod and a smile, both of which are politely returned. Given the where they are, he’d been half expecting a couple of champagne flutes, or at least some fancy cocktails. Despite countless nights at Forlini's celebrating wins and commiserating losses, it still catches Sonny off guard that Barba knows a bottle of something chilled and a fraction of the price is much more his speed.

Even though the initial surge of people has thinned, the pleasant hum of conversation and laughter permeating throughout the room gives the impression of it being fuller than it actually is, meaning they end up unconsciously sticking close to the bar, just shy of the winding queue. Sonny settles casually against the solid mahogany counter, the edge pressing firmly but not uncomfortably against his ribs. Barba mirrors his position, the two of them facing each other.

“You’re remarkably fine with being seen here,” Barba comments offhandedly after taking a sip of his cider.

Confused, Sonny glances behind him, then behind Barba, too, for good measure. “Err, why wouldn’t I be?” Barba gives him a flat look and Sonny feels his eyebrows involuntarily dart up towards his hairline once he realises what he’s implying. “Yikes, you think I care about that sort of thing?”

“I can’t imagine a discussion about who was the best Jean Valjean would go over particularly well in the squadroom.”

“You’d be surprised,” Sonny attempts half-heartedly.

“I really wouldn’t,” he counters, then, softer, “Seriously though, good for you.”

Feeling like some sort of fraud, Sonny rushes to explain himself. “Don’t get me wrong, I used to care, even thought of it as my dirty little secret and everything.”

Barba cocks his head to the side, genuine curiosity colouring his features. “What changed?”

Sonny pushes a thumbnail under the damp label wrapped around his bottle. It bunches up on itself from the pressure, a sticky residue left behind in its wake. “Once I started working homicide I realised there were bigger things to worry about."

“That’s surprisingly mature of you.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“Well I _was_ going to say brave but there’s nothing particularly surprising about that,” Barba admits easily.

Sonny’s eyes widen and he hurriedly takes a big gulp of his drink as Barba watches on, quietly amused.

“So…” Sonny begins, drawing out the ‘o’ longer than strictly necessary. “What got you into theatre?”

“You’re shocked _this_ is a world I of all people would be familiar with?”

Sonny chuckles. “Well, no, but that doesn’t mean you _like_ it. You have a reputation to uphold, right? Big shot lawyer, ADA. I’m sure your bosses would prefer you to fit into their nice little pigeon holes. Make them look good. This world?” He pauses to gesture to their surroundings. “It’s still very elitist.”

“I appreciate the concern but I’m not in the business of doing anything I don’t want to.”

Sonny points at him accusingly, his fingertip brushing the silk of his tie. “I know for a fact you hate those stuffy galas you’re forced to attend,” he crows. 

Barba bats the offending digit away as if swatting a fly, rolling his eyes at the wounded look Sonny pulls. “That’s because I’m surrounded by married men who think I want to hear them objectify the female waitstaff.”

“Okay, fair,” Sonny concedes, tipping his bottle towards Barba in defeat.

As Barba opens his mouth to reply, someone too impatient to bother with the substantial queue knocks into him from behind, making him stumble forward and his cider slosh up the neck of his bottle and erupt out the top like a volcano. He’s already turning around with a face like thunder to say something suitably cutting when Sonny latches onto his arm and he pulls him in close.

“Hey, watch it,” he says over Barba’s head, his accent coming out thicker in his annoyance. “There are other people here, too, ya know.”

The guy barely spares them a second glance but Sonny has him sussed; hundred dollar haircut, bulging wallet in his hand. Probably gets up to go take a piss right in the middle of an emotional scene, unconcerned that he's disturbing everyone around him. “Yeah, sorry, bud,” he offers insincerely, already leaning over the bar top to flag down the harried barman.

Sonny bites back the angry retort on the tip of his tongue and instead reaches over to pull some napkins out of a nearby dispenser. He presses them over Barba’s hands to soak up the liquid clinging to his skin, the paper turning damp beneath his touch. “Doesn’t matter where you are there’ll always be that one rude asshole,” Sonny grumbles under his breath.

There’s barely a few inches between them now but that in itself isn’t too unusual. Sonny often finds himself looming over Barba’s shoulder to get a glimpse of a folder he happens to be holding or huddled up close to his side as they watch someone be interrogated on the other side of a pane of glass. Even outside of the precinct, courthouse and 1 Hogan Place, when Barba can be coaxed along on a night out, they somehow still end up pressed together. And Sonny generally doesn’t give it a second thought, doesn’t _allow_ himself to, but without the pretext of work or an audience made up of their colleagues, Sonny can’t help but be aware of every part of Barba that brushes up against him.

Barba looks at him in consideration as he methodically wipes his hands. Once having mopped up as much of the spill as he can, he screws the napkins into a single tight ball and discards it next to his now abandoned cider bottle. “I used to be in the drama club,” he eventually shares.

Well would you look at that, he’s come full circle.

Sonny can so easily picture the scrappy Cuban kid from the Bronx that grew into the man in front of him. Had they been the same age and gone to the same school, Sonny’s sure it would have been Barba he’d have been following around like a love-struck fool. And sure, maybe he wouldn’t have called it that at the time, but him and Barba? They’ve always had that elusive pull.

“Wanted to be a Broadway star, Counselor?”

Barba’s smile turns wistful, soft around the edges. “Something like that.”

“I can see you on stage,” Sonny admits. “I mean, what you do in court is basically a performance, isn’t it? There are protagonists, antagonists. There’s an audience. You’ve got to make people believe in what you’re saying.” He counts the similarities off one by one on his fingers, the connection between Barba and his love of theatre making more and more sense with each one.

“I don’t sing my cross examinations, though, do I?”

“God, I wish you would,” Sonny sighs longingly which startles Barba into a laugh, loud and unabashed with his head thrown back. Sonny grins in delight. “Did you sing? In drama club, that is,” he questions in a rush, eager to keep him in the moment.

“I did,” Barba allows with a small indulgent smile.

“I bet you have a real nice singing voice, Rafael,” Sonny admits softly. He briefly loses himself in imagining how Barba would sound and what sort of characters he’d play, immediately enamoured with the thought of him moving across a stage. When he shakes himself back into the present, Sonny notices that Barba’s a shade darker than usual, flushed as if having just gone for a short sprint, and he’s sucker punched with the realisation that he’s embarrassed him. That’s another new look. Two in one night. Sonny clears his throat, studiously ignoring the heat pin-pricking across his own cheeks. “Why didn’t you pursue it?”

After a beat, Barba exhales and a combination of mint and apple cider curls around Sonny’s senses. 

“When I was around 11, I used check out plays from the local library and act them out in my room. I’d really go all out, too. Props, costume changes, different accents for different characters. You name it. I tried to do it when no one else was around, but sometimes I wasn’t so lucky. I remember that first time my abuelita caught me and the disappointed _‘Oh, Rafi, no’_ that followed. She didn’t disapprove per se, but she was convinced the only way I could ever be successful was to be a either a doctor or a lawyer. Thought I owed it to myself and to mom. And I still don’t necessarily disagree. Of course, that’s nothing compared to what my father thought,” he spits the last part through an ugly laugh, hand unconsciously curling into a fist against the polished bar top. “What about you? Have you always liked the theatre?” 

It’s a blatant deflection but Sonny’s willing to play along for now. “I _may_ have overstated my interest to impress a girl,” he mutters, realising just how embarrassingly juvenile his own admission sounds in comparison.

Barba looks at him blankly for a couple of seconds before shaking his head in fond disbelief. “Of course,” he says, loosening his hand out of its tight clench. Relieved, Sonny releases the breath he’d been holding.

“You’ll be pleased to know it didn’t work. After the fourth time she called me Donald instead of Dominick I realised she probably _wasn’t_ cutting out pictures from bridal magazines and sticking them in her ‘Sonny and Meghan’s Dream Wedding’ scrapbook.”

Barba purses his lips into a straight line to stop himself from laughing. “Her loss,” he says after a while, echoing Sonny from earlier. “Anyway, no more sentimentality otherwise I’ll puke. It looks like Act II is about to start,” he segues, nodding over to the stream of people slowly making their back into the auditorium. “Ready to inexplicably root for a stalker slash murderer?”

“Gotta love theatre,” Sonny muses.

* * *

Sonny’s hands are still raw from clapping when he offers to collect both of their jackets from the cloak room. 

He fumbles with them when they’re handed over by the attendant, his fingers uncooperative, and after ungracefully stuffing his arms into his black mac, he holds out Barba’s camel overcoat for him to step into. As he helps him into it, he briefly brushes against the back of Barba’s neck where his hair is downy soft, marvelling at how it soothes his over sensitised skin and what it would feel like to put his lips there instead.

When they finally shuffle out of the theatre and onto the damp sidewalk, Sonny takes a deep breath, his lungs filling with the chilly New York night air until they burn.

“This was nice,” Sonny says on the tail end of his exhale.

“Don’t ruin it now,” Barba replies, attention already back on his phone as he orders a Lyft. He’d slipped it out of his pocket as soon as the last performer left the stage, intimately aware of the consequences that one missed message or call could have in his line of work. “You don’t have to wait with me,” he adds.

“I know,” Sonny says simply as he jumps out of the way to let a woman with a stroller by, wiggling his fingers in a little wave to the bundled up toddler strapped inside.

“Should be here in five minutes,” Barba says instead, knowing how this particular back-and-forth of theirs goes by now.

Sonny stuffs his hands deep into his pockets and rocks back on his heels. In his haste to escape the precinct earlier he ended up leaving his gloves and scarf stuffed away in his desk draw. He regrets not taking those extra couple of minutes to fish them out, every sliver of exposed skin already stinging from the biting cold. As if sensing the steady prickle of goosebumps across his flesh, Barba shifts closer until their arms are pressed together.

“You know, that Danny Zuko hair of yours makes a lot more sense now,” Barba comments. His chin is tilted down towards his chest, forcing him to look up in a way that shadows his eyes. The attractive quirk to his mouth deepens when he notices that Sonny is staring.

Sonny’s not an idiot, he knows what’s going on. It’s been months, _years_ , in the making. Every shared look across a room, every lingering touch, every aborted movement towards each other because _no, not yet_. All that matters now is the how, no more thinking when because the when is finally _now_. The thought is weirdly calming, like being in the eye of a storm.

“I got chills, they’re multiplying,” he croons, deliberately adding a crack to his voice. Barba releases a puff of laughter that briefly hangs ghostly white in front of him before evaporating away into nothing.

“You didn’t try to sing to that poor girl of yours, did you? Because if so, that’s probably where you went wrong.”

“Hey!”

When Barba’s Lyft finally pulls up, Sonny darts forward to open the door for him, slipping slightly on the wet curb in his eagerness. Once Barba’s settled inside, he leans an arm on the open door, his other hand splayed out widely on the roof of the car to support himself so he can peer in at Barba.

“Hey, Rafael?”

Barba looks up and there’s not a single trace of annoyance or any suggestion that he’s being humoured in those familiar green eyes just… expectation. Sonny swipes his tongue over his bottom lip and stoops lower, head practically in the car with him. Then, making up his mind, he jolts forward and presses a small kiss to the corner of Barba’s mouth.

It’s quick, over before Barba could even allow his eyes to flutter shut. “We should do this again sometime,” he suggests, studiously ignoring the loud pulsating thump of his own heartbeat in his ears.

It takes a few moments for Barba to reply, each agonising second feeling like a million years. He'd been so _sure_ that Bar—

“It should be easy enough to commandeer the next pair of tickets that pass through the office before anyone else gets their uncultured paws on them,” he eventually allows. “If you’re interested in the spare, that is."

Sonny hangs his head in relief. “I’d love that.”

The interior of the car is illuminated by the brightly lit billboard behind them, the iconic Phantom mask blazoned across it a blurred reflection in the windows. The driver sat upfront is doing her best to give them some semblance of privacy, her attention on the traffic streaming past instead of what’s happening behind her.

Reaching up, Barba slides his fingers down Sonny’s cheek until they’re curling under his jaw in a loose hold. He then draws Sonny back in towards him, catching his bottom lip between his two.

“I’ll see you soon, Sonny,” he murmurs sweetly against his mouth.

Sonny nods as he backs up onto the sidewalk in a daze, belatedly raising a hand as Barba’s driver finally pulls away.

It started with a girl.

But Sonny thinks it might just finish with a boy.


End file.
